be high time
for the New England states to secede from the Union, and form a
confederation by themselves. The situation was dangerous in the extreme.
Had the question been forced to an issue, the southern states would
never have seen their western territories go and offer themselves to
Great Britain. Sooner than that, they would have broken away from the
northern states. But New Jersey and Pennsylvania now came over to the
southern side, and Rhode Island, moving in her eccentric orbit,
presently joined them; and thus the treaty was postponed for the
present, and the danger averted.

[Sidenote: Washington's views on the importance of canals between east
and west.]

[Sidenote: His far-sighted genius and self-devotion.]

This lamentable dispute was watched by Washington with feelings of
gravest concern. From an early age he had indulged in prophetic dreams
of the grandeur of the coming civilization in America, and had looked to
the country beyond the mountains as the field in which the next
generation was to find room for expansion. Few had been more efficient
than he in aiding the great scheme of Pitt for overthrowing the French
power in America, and he understood better than most men of his time how
much that scheme implied. In his early journeys in the wilderness he had
given especial attention to the possibilities of water connection
between the east and west, and he had bought for himself and surveyed
many extensive tracts of land beyond the mountains. The subject was a
favourite one with him, and he looked at it from both a commercial and a
political point of view. What we most needed, he said in 1770, were easy
transit lines between east and west, as "the channel of conveyance of
the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire." Just before
resigning his commission in 1783 Washington had explored the route
through the Mohawk Valley, afterward taken first by the Erie Canal, and
then by the New York Central Railroad, and had prophesied its commercial
importance in the present century. Soon after reaching his home at Mount
Vernon, he turned his attention to the improvement of intercourse with
the west through the valley of the Potomac. The east and west, he said,
must be cemented together by interests in common; otherwise they will
break asunder. Without commercial intercourse they will cease to
understand each other, and will thus be ripe for disagreement. It is
easy for mental habits, as well as merchandise, t